Reflections on negative philosophy

Oh man, plumbing problem. So a few days away from blogging or even thinking of these things. No meditation.

I am just rebuilding myself a little after life chaos. Like, eating properly and stuff. But one of the things I did to chill recently. Is started a fight on reddit.

It was on a male, and probably older male focused subreddit. But I engaged in a philosophical discussion about determinism. It was a good enough subforum for me to passionately state my case, without being haranged and banned. They could handle conflict.

It started indirectly. I responded to something someone said and then got the idea to challenge the forum from what I have understood of Stefan Molyneux's understandings of determinism. 

But I learnt something I think. Or I observed something that I think illustrates an important point. 

I also, when looking for this material, went through my notes on Stefan Molyneux. I found them unbelievably profound and, for whatever reason. While I have retained a good deal of what he talks about. There is a lot I also haven't seemed to retain. A lot of things I read from my notes were as though I was reading for the first time. 

Anyway, Stefan Molyneux's argument against determinism. Not his full argument. Because he has many hours on it. But his argument from a podcast that was, 5682 "Determinism murders virtue". But just that podcast that I have already listened to makes several interesting cases. And it became my material to argue against the group of people I was arguing against, who were HEAVILY pro determinism. 

It is a good, intuitive argument, I think. But still, one pattern emerged. My understanding of determinism is that it is a philosophy that strips moral agency from people, by putting down the idea of free will. So an example from Stefans podcast, which none on that forum argued against, is that if a person is a determinist. They might believe that because their father beat them. They are destined to beat their child. That we have no free will. So this is just how it is.  

From this perspective, I am defining determinism as a fairly negative philosophy. Since the Law of One defines free will as the most important law of the Universe. We can say at least that it is categorically confused. 

So in examining this fairly negative philosophy. A few interesting patterns came up. It is also interesting as to how to handle negativity in general. 

Going back to Saint Francis of Assissi's definition. That negativity is a lack. It is a void. A few experiences I have had have made me think about that. So what happens when you confront negativity I think is that you attach, a person ideally attaches. Not to the negativity itself. Not to the substance of the determinists argument. Of which there is no substance. But to the more positive things that indirectly connect to it.

What did Stefan talk about? He talked about the intuitive change a person would experience if they thought they were speaking to a real person (I.e. the free will person) Or an AI (A being without free will). He talked about technical arguments. "Why would you do x if there was no y?" The flaw and bad faith in the argument that everyone is powerless relative to Omniscience.  He ends it on the description of the malevolence of the idea in relation to moral reasoning. 

But these are mostly things that don't actually reference the idea. But reference the natural positive instinct that people have that show that the idea is ridiculous or damaging. 

A lot of the examples I got back were kind of slimey. What people with bad theories often do is they simply try to represent their ideas well, by using generally positive terms and not defining said terms. There was not a lot of consistency in the response. Some people seemed to be using over intellectualised language. Which I thought through and challenged. 

People just tried to endlessly redefine what Determinism was. One time someone clearly said that we are compelled by our survival instincts. So everything is determinism and there is no free will. I said that there are people that commit to things such as feminism, and decide not to have kids. There are deliberate martyrs. 

The guy then said that this was no proof against determinism. So I said then that it is an unfalsifiable belief and was more of a "faith". There were a few attempts to define it as a kind of theological belief. So the goalposts shift. 

I can't expect a reddit subforum to properly articulate a high level philosophical belief. But I don't know that this is one. The Law of One subforum, with some notable exceptions. Had very little conception of what the Law of One actually said, and often made posts wildly diverging from it. I doubt a few of them had even read the Law of One. 

But, the emotional core of the argument. The motivation of why a lot of people pursue it, can be explored. Because it will be revealed under this kind of conflict. A few people started saying "Well, what do you think about free will". The argument is, semi obviously from the forum. Not so much a love of determinism. But a hatred of free will.  

So the points made were partially things like "If the belief is a rejection of another things, like Santa Claus or God, you don't need to justify it, so lack of a null hypothesis doesn't invalidate it."

The deep point of this forum is simply the refusal to believe in free will. Any point made against them meant that the definition of determinism shifted, to avoid being targeted. Because the thing that is fundamentally true and didn't shift. Is the idea of free will, that was being opposed. 

This is why the negative is so chameleon like. Because they are defining themselves against something, rather than for something. Which kind of puts them in the middle of "nothing", in a way. 

Which is why their belief cannot really be tackled head on. The Law of Free Will itself means that there are certain things that we cannot make others accept. To me, that says that for certain concepts. Proof will never be perfect.  

So how to handle this? In truth I believe these concepts CANNOT be opposed. I doubt very much whether what I have said on that forum has made an impact. It might have. But if and when it does, it will probably be in relation to other life events. 

I have often wondered to myself why the world is so bereft of supernatural events. In line with the Law of One. I do not accept that matter simply never responds like that. But I do see an incredible advantage in terms of polarity and spiritual laws, if all our conflict is restricted to the physical. To the real world, and the movement of resources. 

Theoretically, if what I have been saying is correct. If determinism is a really unpleasant ideology that paralyses the person. The pain for the people following it will come when they apply these ideas in the real world, and somehow, somewhere, someone pushes against them. It is how I think the world will work at other times. If someone I know disliked me for political reasons. If those were suddenly removed. The political reasons would be no excuse. Only their behaviour would be left. And they would have to justify it in other ways.